Comment by precompute

I think when submissions like this stay up, it encourages other people in the future. If you search for "hired" and sort by time you'll get this submission along with other "Who wants to be hired" posts.

"Who wants to be hired (June 2023)" : 140 points, 17 hours

This submission: 121 points, 4 hours

There's a certain kind of user / member that really craves being a part of the group and yet never really tries, he'll just try and ape what the "successful" people do. As communities get larger, these people increase in number. Submissions like this are basically crack for them. You'll get a couple of these threads every single week, and in the end you'll have to moderate the problem away anyway, because they won't just stop at "Who got hired", they'll start with "How to get hired on HN" and then try to game the entire thing. It'll tank people's confidence in getting good talent off HN. After all, there's only so much you can do to filter candidates, you can't conclusively claim "fraud" if someone has 7/10 "good" indicators.

I speak from some experience, I moderate a small niche community that doesn't require any physical capital to initiate the "hobby". There's a lot of people that just want an exclusive "community" but don't care if they're genuine about it. Some people get it, it invites countersignalling (not always direct, in-your-face stuff) and then the community degrades rapidly unless you can silo the good users away.